Why models underestimate West African tropical forest primary productivity
Tropical forests dominate terrestrial photosynthesis, yet there are major contradictions in our understanding due to a lack of field studies, especially outside the tropical Americas. A recent field study indicated that West African forests have among the highest forests gross primary productivity (GPP) yet observed, contradicting models that rank them lower than Amazonian forests. Here, we show possible reasons for this data-model mismatch. We found that biometric GPP measurements are on average 56.3% higher than multiple global GPP products at the study sites. The underestimation of GPP largely disappears when a standard photosynthesis model is informed by local field-measured values of (a) fractional absorbed photosynthetic radiation (fAPAR), and (b) photosynthetic traits. Remote sensing products systematically underestimate fAPAR (33.9% on average at study sites) due to cloud contamination issues. The study highlights the potential widespread underestimation of tropical forests GPP and carbon cycling and hints at the ways forward for model and input data improvement.
Authors
- H. Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4801-8771)
- Yadvinder Singh Malhi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3503-4783)
- Imma Oliveras Menor (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5345-2236)
- Stephen Adu‐Bredu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7487-7911)
- Jesús Aguirre‐Gutiérrez (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9190-3229)
- Ruijie Ding (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3848-8107)
- Benjamin David Stocker (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2697-9096)
- I. Colin Prentice (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1296-6764)
- Akwasi Duah‐Gyamfi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3030-063X)
- Xiongjie Deng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7451-9732)
- Eleanor R. Thomson (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1670-8970)
- Agne Gvozdevaite
- Sam Moore
Institutions
- University of Bern (CH)
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (CH)
- Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (FR)
- Stockholm Environment Institute (GB)
- Université de Montpellier (FR)
- Leverhulme Trust (GB)
- University of Oxford (GB)
- UMR Botanique et Modélisation de l’Architecture des Plantes et des végétations (FR)
- Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (GH)
- Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (FR)
- Imperial College London (GB)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2024-11-06
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-53949-0
- Citations
- 18
- Primary Topic
- Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 5.09
Funders
- U.S. Department of Energy
- Leverhulme Trust
- Sight Research UK
- University of Oxford
- European Commission
- Office of Science
- Natural Environment Research Council
- Biological and Environmental Research